MODEL RELEASED. Android robot. Professor Rodney Brooks and his android robot Cog playing with toy slinkies. Cog, which is short for cognitive, can make autonomous adjustments to a program it has to control the slinky. It was developed for artificial intelligence (AI) research and can co- ordinate its hearing and visual systems to pinpoint a noise source. It can make eye contact with humans and track a moving object. Cog can also be used to study how humans learn through interactions with other people. Brooks is the head of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA.